If there was one piece of advice to be given to someone new to this country, it would be that all is not what it seems. Never has there been such a culture where trickery, illusion, and misdirection are part and parcel of the political and social fabric. Joseph Goebbels and P.T. Barnum alike would be proud of modern-day American media, corporate PR, advertisers, and ruling bodies. The art of hoaxing has almost become de rigeur in our fair land, and bullshit is now an elemental part of society’s fabric. What a time to be alive.

It’s funny when pre-release internet movie trailers or home-made videos posted on YouTube fool viewers into thinking a character or event is real, or even when phony Nigerian emails part fools from their money, but it’s not so funny when many online forums and message boards are nothing more than psy-ops matrices designed to keep people confused and running in circles, and disseminating disinformation. It’s even less funny when the mainstream media doctors videos and images, elections are stolen, and the elites have everyone thinking that a dry-drunk idiot from Texas is their leader. It seems that reality is now relative to how convincing anyone’s con is. It’s gotten to where finding more than half the truth about anything has become a search for the Holy Grail.

How many people know that Laurance Rockefeller spent millions propping up UFO research groups, and paid through the nose to keep Pulitzer Prize winner and Harvard alumnus Dr. John Mack working on the “alien abduction” scenario, and writing best-selling books on the subject? Was this just another eccentric millionaire hobby, or was it a grand scheme to create a cover story for covert experimentation with exotic technology? The answer is that Rockefellers seldom trifle with anything, and have long been among the most significant of string-pullers in the western world. They simply do not play. Among their grand hoaxes are the perceived breakup of Standard Oil, the betterment of the public through foundation-giving, and their loyalty to the U.S. throughout World War Two. Certainly, no bigger weasels are to be found in our nation’s history, and, at any given time, an elder Rockefeller could reach into his pocket and pull out a senator, or Supreme Court judge, or even a president.

A favored technique of the elite spin-doctors is to create a hoax around a particular subject, and then expose it as such, and make all rational discussion of the subject seem ludicrous. A good example was the handling of presidential candidate John Kerry’s membership in Skull & Bones. A hoax was created to tie Kerry in with Satanist Anton La Vey. It was just clumsy enough to be easily exposed, and so the whole Skull & Bones issue became a farce. Nothing like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The best way to hide the elephant in the room is to deftly paper it with the kind of outlandish lies that empty the room out.

The best hoax of all, though, is the denial of meaningful hoaxes. They’re labeled as conspiracy theories, and filed in the tin-foil hat section. The miracle of this meme is worthy of George Orwell’s darkest notions, and is the grand-mal seizure of American group-think. If this mental undoing continues unabated, it will prove to be the kool-aid that puts us all to sleep for good.

In my first year, my crib was stationed in my sister’s room. As I have been told, I developed a technique for escaping my crib, but wisely kept it to myself. It was a means to an end, though, and my game was to wait until my sister was asleep, and then creep up to her bed and give her long hair a yank. She would wake with a start and scream for Daddy while I quickly climbed back into my crib and played possum. After not being believed and getting in hot water for this a few times, my sister turned the tables on me. She played possum until the next time I made my move, and got a good hold of me before I could escape. I was caught like a rat. Dad was summoned, and was forced to issue an apology to my sister, and to consider putting chicken wire around the top of my crib. So, it goes to show that your little hoax can blow back on you if you’re dealing with the wrong person. Maybe some day we’ll learn how to turn the tables on our masters. It sure isn’t going to be tomorrow, though.

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Welcome to the Art of the Prank, produced and edited by Joey Skaggs. Here you will find insights, information, news and discussions about art, pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking around the world - past, present and future - mainstream and counter culture. You are invited to contribute to its development. May your journey be filled with more than your expectations.